Pumpkin and Chickpea Soup

The colours and flavours in this soup glow with warmth. Robust and chunky, it goes perfectly with croutons or dark brown bread and will provide inner warmth for a cold day. This is an adaptation of a recipe by Denis Cotter whose imaginative vegetarian recipes are a great source of inspiration.
Apart from Halloween the chances of finding anything other than butternut squash in our local supermarket is absolutely zero. So if you use one of the squashes with a thin skin it is best to peel it before roasting.
My version of this recipe (for carnivores) was serendipitous: looking for some stock to dilute the leftover soup revealed some dregs of sauce from a pot of west country chicken. The result ambrosial, if cholesterol raising.

About 1kg pumpkin or squash

4 small shallots finely chopped

4 garlic cloves thinly sliced

½ medium bulb fennel finely chopped

3 leeks, thinly sliced

2 tbsp fresh ginger grated

250g chickpeas (either tinned or soaked and cooked)

25g diced smoked pancetta

4 tbsp olive oil

800ml chicken stock

100ml dry cider (or white wine)

juice ½ lemon

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp fennel seeds ground

seasoning

50-100ml double cream

Cut the pumpkin/squash into wedges remove the seeds, brush lavishly with olive oil and roast at 190ºC (375ºF) for about 30 minutes or until soft. If using pumpkin, scoop out the flesh from the skins, before chopping roughly. If the squash has been peeled before roasting this is not required, just chop or mash to a lumpy consistency. Think rustic not precise dice.

Heat the olive oil in a pan and sauté the shallots and fennel gently over a medium heat for about 2 minutes. Add the garlic ginger, spices, leeks, chickpeas and pancetta and fry for about another 5 minutes. Add the cider, cover and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

Add the pumpkin and the stock, bring to the boil and simmer for another 5 minutes. Add lemon juice and check the seasoning. Remove from the heat and gently add the cream, sufficient to enrich the stock but not to make it too creamy.

Notes:The pancetta is optional but it adds a light smokey note to the flavours. Similarly you can leave out the cream and substitute vegetable stock or water for the chicken stock and the cider or white wine and still have a delicious soup. However, if you follow the strictly vegetarian route, you will need to adjust the seasoning and may wish to add a pinch of ground dried chilli (amount according to taste) or more ginger.
Soups are more about inspiration than science, so you can vary the proportions and substitute leeks for onions and don’t worry if you don’t have fennel. The secret is to taste and adjust to what you like in terms of flavour and consistency. Like many soups this tastes better the second time around.

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7 thoughts on “Pumpkin and Chickpea Soup”

Being the proud possessor of 4 small home grown squash I shall give this a try, or a variation thereof – it is too easy to fall back on my favourite red lentil and the usual veg, much as I love it. Recipe copied and pasted as I write – thank you….

Your reputation is intact, Christine, as I have made the soup (or a version thereof) and it was very much enjoyed by the Golfer and myself. It did not, however, include garlic ( 😦 thinks the Golfer), shallots (had none), fennel (ditto) or chickpeas – I thought I had half a tin of chickpeas in the freezer but didn’t, and although I considered including butter beans or haricot beans which I did have I decided not to, and in hindsight I was happy not to have chickpeas in it anyway. No fennel seeds either, and forgot the lemon. We had some chorizo left so used that instead of pancetta – this definitely added to the successful flavour of the soup. Even though the stock was Christmas turkey stock it did not overpower the other flavours – the soup was a real success (and a change from red lentil and veg!). Thank you 🙂

Thank you for raising a smile on this wet and windy Sunday morning. I got so confused by what was omitted and substituted I wasn’t sure whether the pumpkin/skin made it into the soup pan. With such creative innovation I think I’ll have to invite you to become a member of the Grand Order of the Soup Dragon.